


8 Ways To Touch Him (Before He's Sober)

by Aja



Category: Things to Do Before You're 30 (2005)
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you so much, Sandrine, for the opportunity to write such a fun pairing!  Thanks to Epon for the encouragement and Franzi as always for the annual Yuletide commiseration and last-minute fic betas. :D :D :D</p>
    </blockquote>





	8 Ways To Touch Him (Before He's Sober)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrine Shaw](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sandrine+Shaw).



> Thank you so much, Sandrine, for the opportunity to write such a fun pairing! Thanks to Epon for the encouragement and Franzi as always for the annual Yuletide commiseration and last-minute fic betas. :D :D :D

 

 

Johnny's dad always said: don't count your chickens `til you've unloaded a few rounds into the fox prowlin' around outside the coop. (That was his way of saying that a best defense is a good offense. At least, Adam thinks it was. ...He's pretty sure, anyway.)

There's only one fox in Adam's life, and given this particular fox's track record, Adam really, really shouldn't be surprised when all hens break loose.

Cass shows up six months after the break-up slobbering drunk and sporting a hickey in the most embarrassing location Adam has ever seen. "Didn't even know you could fit a mouth there," he says.

Cass moans and says, "Will you get mummy a poultice, darling, this shit's going to be fucked as hell in the morning."

Adam rolls his eyes and interprets this, presumably correctly, as a request for hangover medicine. That's a trick he learned from old Don too: take three tomatoes, mix with a shot of gingerale and - the clincher - a hint of wasabi. Gets 'em cold every time.

Adam doesn't want to think about how many one night stands he's helped out with that one. Or how many times he's helped Cass out with that one, either.

He slides Cass's feet over on the couch and offering him the drink without a word. Cass takes a drink, winces.

"Whole thing, down it goes." Adam tips the glass in his hand.

"Right, right, mum."

"Don't you know it," Adam says sternly. "In the morning I'll make you write that girl's mother and apologize."

"Makes you think it was a girl," Cass says.

Adam stares at him.

Cass laughs.

"Just having you on, mate," he says, grinning, or rather leering the drunken leer of a man born with an obnoxious belief in his own ability to be absolutely charming even at the worst times.

"So what happened," Adam says, "You having a meltdown or something?"

Cass sighs and stretches out, feet winding up in Adam's lap (which, incidentally, is one of the eight Everyday Straight Male Touches That Should Be Gay But Aren't - beginning with #1: the low five, and ending with Adam's personal favorite, #8: the Gymn Stretch Assist - homoerotic clutching complete with grunting. "Thing is," he says, less a slur than a tired drawl that makes Adam wonder if he even went to bed at all last night, " I don't think I was ever ready."

Understatement of the fucking Epoch of Incredulity, Adam thinks, but he only shifts his arm around Cass's shoulder, gives him a grandfatherly shoulder clasp (#7 on the Straight Man's Touch list) and says:

"Ready for what?"

Ready for adulthood, he thinks. Ready for commitment, for a serious relationship, for Kate, for Adam to almost-tell him that he spent an embarrassing amount of time being hopelessly in love with him. Ready for a real job. For a kid. For life.

"Ready for the bloody football to end," Cass says.

"Sorry?" says Adam.

"Five hundredth," says Cass. His eyes are closed. His hair hasn't been brushed in what, were he sober, would be an unforgivably long time. "Game over, go home, everybody goes away happy and moves on. Just like that, I mean - what's the point of something if it just up and fucking _ends?_ "

Adam ponders getting a drink of his own. "You came here, sodding drunk, to ask me that?" he says. "At half past midnight on a fucking Tuesday?"

Cass opens his eyes. "What?" he says blearily. "Were you going out?"

"You know, a better question might be if you ever even left the football," Adam snaps, peevish for reasons he bloody well knows, reasons as incomprehensible and frustrating as Cass himself, reasons that just make him more peevish.

"What's that mean?"

"You're a fucking stalemate, s'what it means," Adam says. "Look at you. If you haven't moved on from Kate just -"

Cass bristles instantly, like the word comes complete with a nice new set of clawmarks. "Just what?"

"...I don't know, just - just move the fuck on!"

"And do what, like I'm supposed to just _forget_ about my girlfriend, my _kid_ \- "

"No," Adam says, biting back the reminder that Kate's not his girlfriend. "But keeping them in your life doesn't mean you can't change yourself."

"That's the fucking problem, though!" Cass bursts out, sitting up, downing his glass, and then instantly regretting it when the wasabi hits right between the eyes. "Why's it always got to be about change, why can't things stay the bleeding same?"

"Have you learned nothing in your thirty years of life on this earth," Adam deadpans.

Cass considers. "Learned how to give great head," he says.

"Oh, you cunt," Adam laughs in spite of himself.

"But really now," Cass says. He pokes Adam in the ribs (that's Straight Man's Touch #5). "You know Johnny's dad always said."

"What, the bit about small dicks increasing the rush of oxygen to the brain?"

Cass snorts. "God, no. The bit about the best change being small change."

"Yeah," Adam laughs. "But he never carried nothing but ones."

He reaches up and gives Cass a knuckle rub. It's Straight Man's touch number 3, but maybe he should stop counting sometime. At least, maybe he should stop where Cass is concerned.

"You never wanted me to change, though," Cass says. He looks at Adam, serious for the first time since he dragged his sorry carcass in the door.

Adam stills, slows with his hand still resting against the nape of Cass's neck. "You sorry bastard," he says. "You're totally waiting for me to tell you you're perfect just as you are."

Cass smirks.

"Well, we both know you think I am, anyway," he says.

Adam's heart actually stops in his chest before he can comprehend that Cass hasn't just broken it.

Cass looks at him in concern. "You know," he says. "We both know. You told me."

"What the fuck are you talking about," Adam answers, too quickly. Cass soothes him, hand on his knee - that's not even on the list, that is, that's -

"Kate told me," Cass says. "Last time we fought. I told her I knew that even gay and in love with the wrong sex she'd still rather be with you than me."

"You mother _fucker_ ," Adam breathes, but Cass shushes him, hand on his lips - dry and probably still covered in the grime from his last hookup, and Adam's heart is beating again, oh, yeah, it's beating real fast.

"No, and then she said-" Cass's voice drops to a whisper. "She said, `yeah, well, that goes double for you, don't it?'"

Cass looks at him in disbelief - like Adam's the one who's just told the big shocker.

Adam can't say a word.

Cass asks, "So. You know. Does it?"

Adam thinks he might be drowning. He finds Cass's hand against his knee, finds it and clutches it like driftwood on the open sea.

"You're asking me," he says. "You're asking - holy god, what are you asking?"

"Hey, hey," Cass says, reaching up and brushing his lips against Adam's mouth. "You're supposed to be helping me change."

And yeah, it's drowning, is what this feels like, has to be, this way his lungs keep filling up and leaving him breathless all of a sudden. He leans in, moves his tongue over Cass's lower lip (once when he was twenty-three he'd sat on a shipping dock in Greenwich for an entire night, crying and wanking and thinking about this, about _this_ ) but he can't resist the retort. "Change into _what_ ," he mutters. "I hope it's into some better fucking clothes."

Cass kisses him harder and slips his hand behind Adam's head.

"No, see - it's like what Johnny's dad always said," he says. But then Adam is kissing him again, and kissing him, and later Adam remembers they never got around to what Johnny's dad always said.

Oh, well, he thinks, pulling the covers back over them both.

Maybe next football game.

 

 

 


End file.
